SBSH April, 2011
Sandy Berman recently copied me on a few of his suggestions to the Library of Congress Cataloging Policy & Support Office that I thought some of y'all might enjoy...
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Hidden Wives
It sucks to be a fundamentalist Mormon if you’re not a future God of your own universe (i.e. a man with multiple wives and children, preferably with some prominence in the community). It sucks especially bad if you’re a pretty girl about to be married off to the highest bidder. This angry and compelling, if not especially sophisticated, novel takes on the injustice and cruelty of polygamy as practiced by fundamentalist Mormons. You know what you’re in for with the dedication, “To all the victims of polygamy.”
reviewdate:
Apr 23 2011
isn:
978-0-7653-2689-8
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Grrrl
Marlie, a Toronto teen, starts keeping a journal in August 1990 and keeps it up through October 1992. In that time she obsesses over the the Pretenders, learns to play guitar, discovers riot grrrl, starts a band, makes and loses friends, falls in love with a girl, falls in love with a boy, sees a lot of shows, and basically embraces and releases her inner fierceness.
reviewdate:
Apr 21 2011
isn:
0-9753964-4-7
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Discovery of Witches, A
Twilight meets The Historian. The protagonist is a witch, but vampires figure prominently. Diana Bishop is a renowned scholar on alchemy doing research at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. She pages an enchanted book and all hell breaks loose in the creature community (which includes daemons as well as witches and vampires). The research part is interesting, but the story devolves into the overprotective male vamp, gendered power struggle, and abstinence porn that drove some feminists crazy about the Twilight series.
reviewdate:
Apr 18 2011
isn:
978-0-670-02241-0
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Call for Workshops: Zine Librarians (un)Conference, ZL(u)C 2011
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
July 8-9, 2011
Calling all zine collectors, information activists, underground bibliographers and barefoot librarians! We’re seeking librarians of all stripes to lead a workshop or discussion at the 2nd bi-annual (un)conference of zine librarians!
LC, please provide your constituents with emergency contraception
I submitted this request to the Library of Congress, idfeedback form...
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Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution
I only got halfway through this book, but I spent so much time reading it, I wanted credit. I bet the beginning, Richard Stallman creating GNU and Linus Torvalds and the internet developing Linux are the best parts anyway. This is an informative read, and sometimes compelling, evidence that I eventually put it down to the contrary.
Quotations:
“I certainly never looked at the source code of Unix,” Stallman says. “Never. I once accidentally saw a file, and when I realized it was part of Unix source code, I stopped looking at it.” The reason was simple: The source code “was a trade secret, and I didn’t want to be accused of stealing that trade secret,” he says. “I condemn trade secrecy, I think it’s an immoral practice, but for the project to succeed, I had to work within the immoral laws that existed.”
[Stallman] has no car. “I live in a city where you don’t need to have a car.” He rents a room: “I don’t want to own a house, I don’t want to spend a lot of money. If you spend a lot of money then you’re the slave of having to make more money. The money then jerks you around, controls you life.” Stallman has never married or had children. “That takes a lot of money. There’s only one way I could have made that money, and that is by doing what I’d be ashamed of”--writing nonfree software. “If I had been developing proprietary software, I would have been spending my life building walls to imprison people,” he believes.
“So in my case, Linus improved the kernel in a way that made more work for himself and for me in the short term, but made the kernel clearer, cleaner, and more maintainable in the long run. This lesson by example of taking the high road and doing things right, instead of taking the path of least resistance, made a very big impression on me at the time and became an essential part of my programming philosophy.” Rich Sladkey
reviewdate:
Apr 11 2011
isn:
0-14-029804-5
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When I Am an Old Woman I Will Be a Menace to Society and No One Can Stop Me
As you can imagine, this zine pretty much had me at the title. The contents are 20+ pages of colored-in stick-figure old women engaged in nefarious activities. Some of them are mild: “When I am an old woman I will throw things out of trees at people.” Some are gratuitous: “When I am an old woman I will use impractical implements of destruction for everyday purposes.” (Accompanied by an illustration of a crazy-haired lady taking a hatchet to a lone mushroom on a counter top. Some are what you might expect from an eccentric elderly lady: “When I am an old woman I will cheat rampantly at Bingo.” (I’m looking at you, Sister Loud Melissa.) And others are quite illegal: “When I am an old woman I will take vacations soley for the purposes of gambling and drug-smuggling.”
reviewdate:
Apr 11 2011